


The Terrible and Secret Fate of All Life

by angelheaded_hipsters



Category: Everyman HYBRID
Genre: Gen, M rating for canon events, let's tell stories! let's remember!, will try to keep any invented graphic scenes tasteful and to a minimum
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2020-02-07 06:25:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18614977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelheaded_hipsters/pseuds/angelheaded_hipsters
Summary: "I dunno everything you do or don’t remember. I travel in and around and through, just like you all do when you’re here and not stuck in the game, but you know it’s a lot more linear, for me. I’ve only lived one life, if we’re speaking practically, and just like I won’t know the details of, the backstory, so to speak, that he gives you each time. I’m never sure what you do or don’t remember. Of what we had. You, and mom, and me, and your siblings."





	The Terrible and Secret Fate of All Life

Evan jolted awake, hands instinctively scrabbling for his phone to check the time, before he remembered, and let himself lay still for a moment. His heart pounded, and in the ghostly flashes of color the blood brought to his eyes he saw an awful silhouette, tentacled and mawed. But he allowed himself a chuckle, because it was fading. That, and because he’d really awoken with an urgent need to check the time, despite knowing better. He propped himself up on one elbow and looked around. No clocks, of course. Dark, that’s what time it was. With maybe just a hint of light, slipping in through the cracked door and under the curtains. That was all the reference he really had, here.

He sighed, knowing there was no more sleep coming for him tonight, and worked his way out of his sleeping bag, trying not to disturb Jeff, who still breathed evenly on the cot in the other corner of the room. Vin was upstairs, but Evan had caught Jeff by the wrist last night as he headed to his room and asked for company. Just in case.

He slipped through the crack of the open the door and out towards the front of the house. The faintest humming could be heard as he padded closer to the front door, some tune Evan lacked a name for but also, maybe in a dream, maybe in some other life, he had known it very well. It floated to him along with the sweet, rich scent of a cigar, and he felt the last bits of nightmare-terror melt away as the familiarity calmed him.

Out in the twilight of an early summer morning, his father sat comfortably on the porch swing, humming and smoking into the cool humidity. Something about the tenderness of the glance the man gave him as he stepped out onto the creaking wood twisted his insides. He walked quickly to the other end of the porch swing and sat down hard, head thrust into his hands, and waited for the prickling feeling behind his eyes to subside.

“Hey Dad,” he said after a pause, surprised at the softness of his own voice against the ever-present thrum of insects in the grass.

“Hi son,” said James Corenthal. He let the words hang for a moment, let the bugs chorus on in the blue light. “Want to talk about it?”

Evan sat up straighter, took a shaky breath, and ran a hand through his hair. “Jesus, I guess I just… this dream wound me up more’n usual.” He thought about Jeff, peaceful in his sleeping bag in the front bedroom, and he thought about the mouth and fur and limbs and voice from his dream, and wondered if he’d been thrashing about, and if Jeff had slept through it. “I think it’s probably time to… you know. The way things are going, Steph should be back in… well, soon enough, and I think he’s antsy. To get me back out on the playing field. Like he wants to try something.”

His father didn’t speak for a long moment, puffing on his cigar. “Hmm… You think you need them here? You know, all three of us, we know what we’re dealing with. You don’t have to.”

“You’re gonna be gone for a couple days soon though, like you said, right? I want to be ready. If Vin and Jeff and I go out and do anything, but even here too, I—” He could feel a hole opening up inside him, something big and black and full of grief, and it cut him off. He took a deep, shaky breath. “Just in case. Just in case. Please.”

His father let out a low chuckle, more of acceptance than amusement. “Of course, Ev. You know best. I just… want you to be happy.” He stretched an arm out and draped it around Evan’s shoulders, and Evan leaned into the weight of it, the warm leather and smoke and the faintest scent of antibacterial soap.

“You know that most of the time I’m not too fucked up about it. I mean it’s just how things go here. And I know what to expect and I know his rules. But these dreams… I know they’re not real dreams, you know it too. And they’re… hard to stand sometimes.”

They sat in silence for a few long minutes, as the first weak glow of the sun peeked over the trees. The bugs droned on, and Evan reached up to push damp hair from his forehead. “You ever… think about the nurse? You know.”

Evan felt his father tense beside him, imperceptible except where their bodies touched.

“Did you dream about her?”

“No, no, nothing like that. I just don’t remember it too well. Y’know, ‘cause I was so young. He was so young? We were…? Anyways. I think about it. Sometimes. How he did that. And how he wanted me to know it. And sometimes I do remember, bits, like all the blood? How much blood there was? Because there was a lot. And sure, there’s been worse since. But there’s something about that one that I always think about. I was thinking about it tonight before I went to bed. I could barely stop. I don’t know why. I—”

He choked, and suddenly a senseless revulsion coiled his body like a spring, and he heard someone snarl, almost in humor, “Why the FUCK are you touching me?”  
At first he thought his father had been pulled away from him by some invisible and immense force, but then he realized that the man had deliberately launched himself away from Evan, bolting to his feet, and Evan hadn’t interpreted the force of the movement correctly. In fact, Dr. Corenthal was already halfway in the house by the time Evan had processed what had happened, and then he could hear him rummaging in a drawer as his own body tensed and relaxed wildly. There was an undercurrent, or an afterimage, running under or around or through his thoughts, sharp and pleased and hostile.

No. “No. No, no, no, one, two, three, four… five. One… two… three, four, five. Please pleasepleaseplease.” This mantra was a lifeline, tethering him to a tossed vessel as the Habit cut and wove through his mind like a shark. He could feel his fingers tensed into his flesh— his head? his thighs? Was he clutching his father’s jacket now? Or… fur? “One, two, three, four, five.” Hours or minutes, weeks or seconds. A pair of hands cradling his own. Cold metal. Someone laughing, then growling, a grunt of pain as his foot connected with… a shin? “One, two, three, four, five.”

“Breathe, bud. C’mon. It’s not time yet. It’s ok. Evan. Evan, look at me.”

Evan looked at him. His father’s face, finally coming back into focus.

“That’s right. Just breathe. It’s just a bad night. You’re here, you’re with me, and you know he’s not gonna get what he wants yet. It’s ok. It’s ok.”

“...It’s ok,” Evan repeated. His lips felt thick and strangely clumsy. He blinked a few times. Cautiously worked his way around his body, mentally, tensing and relaxing muscles. He was here. He was ok.

Curled up to his right was a small ginger cat, the one with lamp-yellow eyes they’d seen skulking around the cabin in the past few weeks. It purred softly, looking up at him solemnly. “It’s ok.”

Evan’s father chuckled. “I think she knew you weren’t doing too well. Wanted to comfort you.”

Evan let out a noise somewhere between a derisive laugh and a cough. “Nah, I think she was here for him. He, uh... he likes them, you know.” He felt impossibly tired.

“Eh, don’t be too sure. You remember Mom’s cat, Ghost? She passed just before you all came to live with us, so I dunno if you were too young… but you got to meet her a few times and she just would not leave you alone. Purring up a storm, curled up in your lap…”

Evan raised a hand to brush the hair from his eyes and sensed the handcuffs properly for the first time. “Oh. Thanks. And… I sorta do. Y’know.” The pair were silent for a while, gazing out at the fireflies.

“About that, Ev. The ‘sorta.’ Or the ‘y’know.’ It’s what I’d been wanting to talk to you kids about before I left. I just wanted to say that… well, I don’t always know. I dunno everything you do or don’t remember. I travel in and around and through, just like you all do when you’re here and not stuck in the game, but you know it’s a lot more… linear, for me. I’ve only lived one life, if we’re speaking practically, and just like I won’t know the details of… the backstory, so to speak, that he gives you each time… I’m never sure what you do or don’t remember. Of… what we had. You, and mom, and me, and your siblings.”

A figure suddenly became distinct from the treeline, and both Evan and James went as still as stone. Holding their breath, waiting. The silhouette made its way across the field towards them with an ease that suggested practice, and a heaviness that implied weariness, but you couldn’t ever be sure. Evan held his breath for what seemed like an eternity, until—

“Steph!”

The name came out of him like a blessing as she hit the porch-light's radius, recognizable anywhere, even if the baggy jeans and turtleneck weren’t what she’d preferred the last time he’d seen her.

“Hey, Dad! Hey, you.” She grinned and poked her tongue out at him, and he laughed, in spite of recent events. She could make him do that. “You got any GoGurt in the fridge?”

He could feel his father tense quizzically. “Any what?”

“Oh it’s really good. Artificial as shit, but really good. It came out in like, the late 90s? It’s like a kids’ thing? But I am so hungry and that’s what I’m craving.” She shrugged.

“Dunno about that. Forgive the demon who built my fake childhood for not keeping up with national yogurt trends,” Evan shot back, but he was grinning now. Her dry humor was infectious.

“Um, well,” James coughed, “Maybe there’s some in the fridge. Can never tell, with that thing.”

“Yeah I’ll just grab a glass of water, meditate in front of it for a few, ‘n I’m sure it’ll turn up!” she practically skipped her way up the stairs, yanking open the screen door with her sudden renewed sense of vitality— Evan knew as well as anyone the elation that would pervade the house for the next few… hours? days? weeks? now that they were all back together. The cozy family cottage; gang’s all here! And he, in handcuffs…

He wasn’t resentful of the necessity, really. I mean, shit, it had been his idea! But he was resentful of the exhaustion that came when he began to receive signs. Before the signs started coming, there was plenty of time in what they’d dubbed “The Candleverse,” after the suggestion of some fans in past video-heavy iterations.

Plenty of time to relax here, where it always seemed to border on early summer. Where the days stretched long into the nights, and the nights were for candlelit card games and maybe a little whiskey if someone was feeling frisky and didn’t mind drinking with Dad. Bugs galore, even in the heat of the day, as long as you went down to one of the creeks, scuffed at the edges with high grass. The mosquitoes were vicious there, but with enough bug spray you could cool your feet quite nicely for a few hours, sipping lemonade, sifting through the unorganized catalog of your memories at leisure, until it was time for grilled cheese with homegrown tomatoes and a salad also all picked from the little garden plot behind the house— Dad had sworn he had a black thumb, but Evan coaxed him away from his cigars and his papers and got him kneading in the deep, black earth, watched his face as his first pea plant began to take to its trellis like crazy— and from then on, the garden was a Dad and Evan thing. Sure, sometimes there were garden shears and shovels, but no knives, so they’d been spending hours quietly tilling the earth, checking for rot and pests, sweeping the aisles clear of stray mulch. It was all very calming. Far away from any knife habit.

Steph was the cook. Go-Gurt infatuation or no, she could do wonderful things with their homegrown veggies. Sometimes she would take Jeff or Vinnie out into the woods and show them some trapping skills. No one felt quite comfortable asking her where she’d learned that kind of woodcraft, and she seemed content to not talk about it. But she did bag a few rabbits on her first foray, and promised some fish and maybe even a deer, “If we live that long. Or, y’know, are here that long. Let’s play fast and loose with terminology, right?”

Tonight, everyone gradually shuffled into the living-room-dining-room combo space, flopping on sofas or perching in chairs, each served with an absolutely delicious mega-grilled-cheese stuffed with vegetables, and a lovely side salad with vinaigrette.

Jeff appeared a bit late from upstairs, a little disheveled and clearly disconnected from the goings-on.

“Dude, sup?” asked Evan, a normal greeting underscored with care— Jeff had seemed so peaceful when he’d left him to sleep this morning, but now he’d come down from the upstairs room clearly about to burst through with some frenetic observation, his copy of House of Leaves wedged under his left arm. “ ...You wanna like… talk about it, maybe?”

“Yeah, yeah! But uh, after dinner. I’m fuckin’ starving.”

Everyone laughed at that, and copious amounts of salad and fancy grilled cheese were loaded onto his plate. For a while, as was customary, there was very little conversation as everyone focused on their food. Finally, James put down his fork, wiped his mouth with a paper napkin from the holder on the table that always seemed to be full.

“So. Kiddo,” he nodded towards Jeff, who was sopping up the last bits of vinaigrette with a crust. “Whatcha got for us?”

“Well, um, it’ll actually be easier if I read a little bit from the book first. Just to contextualize.” He was trying not to sound to eager, and failing marvelously. Evan laughed, but not unkindly.

“Well, way thing’s’ve been going I doubt we’ve got all night. Make it snappy!”

“Oh, it’s not a lot of text it’s just—”

“Dude I’m just fucking with you. Go ahead.” Next to Evan, Vinnie began to slowly polish his glasses. A rhythm for focusing, Evan knew. His dad lit a cigar.

“Oh, uh, so, page 170.” Jeff cleared his throat. “‘Christian Norberg-Schulz objects; condemning subjective architectural experiences for the seemingly absurd conclusion it suggests, mainly that ‘architecture comes into being only when experienced.’ Norberg-Schulz asserts: ‘Architectural space certainly exists independently of the casual perceiver, and has centres and directions of its own.’ Focusing on the constructions of any civilization, whether ancient or modern, it is hard to disagree with him. It is only when focusing on Navidson’s house that these assertion begin to blur. Can Navidsons’s house exist without the experience of itself? Is it possible to think of that place as ‘unshaped’ by human perceptions?”

Jeff shut the book, and looked expectantly out at the rest of the family. Evan chuckled deep in his throat, more to fill the awkward silence than anything else. Vinnie looked up.

“So… are you saying that maybe… when we’re not here, when we’re not in, uh ‘Candleverse—’” and here he made air quotes— “That it doesn’t exist? Or doesn’t exist in the same way?”

“Well, it’s pretty damn wacky already,” Evan cut in. “No clocks, always the same season, and at least some sort of weird boundary most of us seem to sort of forget about when we get close to it.” He nodded towards James, whose cigar had gone out. He was the sometimes-exception.

“Are you trying to brainstorm some kind of experiment?” asked Vin. “To see what it’s like when we’re not here?”

“Yeah,” responded Jeff enthusiastically. “Only I don’t really know how to go about it. Gotta have more time to think about that one. And it looks like, this time around at least, we’re a little short.” He gestured to Evan’s handcuffs. Evan shrugged apologetically. “What I was mainly thinking of, right now, is starting a memory bank, figuring out what we know from the first time and beyond. Obviously we probably won’t have everything, but I’d like to get as much in our arsenal as we can. See if we can poke some holes in this fucker. I mean, considering we lost the knife. No offense, Vin. Like really, no offense.” Everyone knew Vinnie had taken his screwups in the last iteration hard, and he looked a little uncomfortable here, but accepted Jeff’s kindness nonetheless.

James, however, had perked up. “Ev and I were talking about memory earlier. Maybe it’s meant to be.”

“Vin, you said you had a tape recorder around here from the last iteration, right?” asked Steph.

“Oh, yeah, probably up in my room. One sec.”

No one really spoke as Vinnie’s heavy footfalls receded and then moved to come from above them. Jeff and Steph cleared the plates; they’d save washing for after story-time, but they might need the table space. By the time they’d returned to the larger room, Vinnie was entering from the opposite side, a small black box clutched triumphantly in his fist.

“Stored the fucked up stuff HABIT put on here last time in a box. Maybe he’ll find it and destroy it, but, y’know, toss-up. This one’s pristine, baby.”

James grinned. “Ok kiddos. Who wants to start?” Everyone looked down at their laps, fingers fidgeting. Then Steph looked up.

“Um, not to volunteer someone else, but um, maybe Evan should start? Because of, y’know, the whole HABIT thing.”

Evan snorted. “That _is_ volunteering someone else, _Damsel_.” But then he sighed, and allowed a smile in her direction. “You’re probably right, though.”

He paused. James had lowered the lights, and a healthy half moon shown in through the front windows. The crickets and frogs had again increased the volume of their chorus. Evan sighed, stretching his shackled hands behind his head, and cracked some bones in his neck.

“Ok. Um. This won’t be perfect, obviously. You’re recording, right, Vin?”

“I am now.”

“No one expects perfect, kiddo,” said James.

Evan took a deep breath. “Alright. Well, you probably know, my mom? Not Maryann—” he looked guiltily towards James, who encouraged him on with a smile. “My mom was… not great. I’m not sure if she ever felt like she knew how to be a parent…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> House of Leaves text belongs to MZD, obviously, not me.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from True Detective S1. Most chapters going forward will be memory/past life vignettes, so be prepared for that!


End file.
